An Electric Flour Mill For Your Own Homemade Breads

A flour mill is used to grind (mill) your own flour from ‘wheat berries’.

By using an electric flour mill you will be able to make your own homemade breads (‘from scratch’) and baked goods resulting in an organic and healthier end-product.

You might say that there are basically two types of flour mills…Electric powered (plug it in) and Manual powered (crank it).

Here’s why an electric flour mill is a good thing to have:

We have both types here, however as you might expect – the electric powered mill is LOTS and LOTS easier and faster.

For ultimate ‘preparedness’ however, the manual (hand) powered flour mill will function without electricity. For day-to-day ‘modern’ living though, the electric flour mill sure is a ‘nice to have’…

The best of both worlds is to have one of each.

An advantage of having an electric flour mill over a hand-crank mill is that they’re so easy to use – and therefore you will likely actually use it, and learn to work with your own milled flour!

There is a wide variety of prices and quality (as with most things), and my recommendation is to buy what you can afford based on your own budget. Generally the cheap products are usually… ‘cheap’. The more expensive products are ‘usually’ ‘better’. You get what you pay for.

We happen to have the Nutrimill Classic and years later we’re still very happy with the purchase, and it gets used a-lot.

The typical flour mill contains two hard abrasive surfaces that face each other – which spin at high speed separated by a very tiny (adjustable) distance, and grinds grain to a powder (flour).

With our flour mill, 1 cup of wheat berries will grind (mill) into just about 2 cups of flour. We use about 2 cups of wheat berries (about 3.5 cups of flour) while making bread.

We keep ‘Wheat Berries’ at home in bulk storage. We have purchased them in 50 pound bags as well as ready-made 5 or 6 gallon buckets.

Most whole grains, when stored properly (cool and dry), can last for decades. They do not begin to spoil or lose nutritional value until the grain is cracked or milled. This is why we only mill what we need immediately before baking – for optimum freshness.

Making fresh organic bread with freshly milled flour…tastes delicious, and is healthier than most store-bought breads (because you control what goes into the recipe). Making your own homemade bread also enables a feeling of self-sufficiency.

The sky is the limit with regards to the bread recipes that you might use or what you decide to throw into the bread – enabling all sorts of flavors and textures.

If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, consider getting yourself a flour mill and start making your own homemade breads (and other baked goods) from your own freshly milled flour.

42 Comments

Walmart online as well as Amazon has them. There are quite a few other online sources as well. One important factor in price is shipping costs. If you are considering milling your own flour for bread making you’ll need to learn about the different types of wheat and their characteristics, especially their protein content. The proteins are what produces gluten, the thing that gives bread its structure. While I’m typing this a sourdough, whole-wheat loaf from flour I milled yesterday with hard white wheat is finishing its second rise and will begin baking shortly.

Agreed. Just as JustAnOldGuy said there many modern (Hybrid) types of Wheat varieties to consider depending on what your making.

Also there are older and Ancient (non hybrid) wheat varieties seeing a resurgence for you to consider. Such as Emmer, Kammut, White Sonoran, Einkorn and others. Some of these older wheat’s are more tolerated by folks with digestive concerns.

Wheat berries are available from a variety of sources. Augason Farms is one source, and is an advertiser here with us. They also sell some of their products through Walmart (often a better price and shipping).

Another source where I have purchased amounts of wheat berries is Honeyville dot com. They are not an advertiser here, but I’m mentioning them anyway due to their very reasonable shipping ($4.99). I wish I could get them as an advertiser 😉

Information about the differences in types of wheat, and wheat varieties would be helpful to a lot of us. Anyone care to share more? My wheat storage is pretty basic, but would like to do more, and make better choices. Thanks ya’ll, Beach’n

I’m with you on that, Ken. The hard reds have more tannin in the bran which adds to the sourness of the bread that’s why I generally use hard white when I’m working with home milled flour. My loaf just came out of the oven. Who needs air fresheners when you’re baking bread?

One or two notes on mills that I’d like to add to the discussion of electric mills. If your counter space is limited and you have a KitchenAid mixer there are a couple of mills that can be powered by the attachment drive on the mixer. One has steel burrs and is the less expensive of the two. The steel burrs can handle oily or moist grains, for example peanuts for making peanut butter. Steel burrs generate more heat during the milling process and some people believe that high heat damages the flour. The other is the Mock Mill. The name derives from the name of its German designer, Wolfgang Mock and it is a real mill. I went with it and so far am very well pleased with its performance. It uses stone burrs and can only grind dry, non-oily grains. There is a range of settings that allow you to select the how fine of a flour you want.

As to fineness the Mock will grind fine flour but the bran and some germ will come through in a coarser state. Some people create flour as fine and uniform as ‘store-boughten’ by sieving the flour with specialty sieves. That’s not my objective however because I want to retain all the nutritious aspects of the grain especially the germ and bran. I have ground Durham wheat, the wheat that semolina flour is made from, and used it to make whole wheat noodles. Their texture is definitely different from noodles made with refined flour but for me that is not off-putting. As a general rule if you are used to refined products you will easily perceive a difference BUT for me that difference enhances rather than degrades the quality of the product.

You can grind corn with the mill but they recommend you not grind popcorn for flour. The problem with popcorn I believe is not so much the oil as the moisture content, the stuff that makes it pop. Using any grain that is too moist with oil or water will gum up the stones. I am looking around for a good source of dent or flint corn at reasonable prices in order to use fresh meal for cornbread and muffins. If I eventually get a steel burr mill and have a good corn source I plan on exploring nixtamalization and preparing masa harina for tortillas and tamales.

The stones will wear somewhat but because they are composite material they match in hardness and therefore have little effect on each other outside of symmetrical wear. I carefully inspect the wheat I’m about to mill to make sure no pebbles or other extraneous materials enter the mill.

NRP12/30/2016

@ JustAnOldGuy

Thank you Sir for the added Info, appreciate it

NRP

country cook01/06/2017

The kitchenaid doesn’t grind near as fine as the nutri mill. I’ve had both.

Mac12/30/2016

We use an electric coffee grinder to grind our wheat berries. Makes a courser bread but still good.

I have a hand mill with a motor attachment. Since I don’t make bread a lot it’s been just right.

Our “modern” wheat is actually a 40 year old wheat, artificially bred in the 70’s with wild grains to create a wheat that has far more gluten than natural wheat and grows more compactly for harvest. I’ve grown Kamut, white wheat and red wheat. I have a few more to try in test plots in the coming years. I was finally able to get a sample of sonoran white! Yay!

Of those I’ve grown, Kamut was the easiest. Hard white and hard red resisted coming out of their sheaths and had far more “leftovers” in the chaff, which also means that more of the kamut fell on the ground prior to harvest. Red and white grow shorter, with more on a single plant.

A few comments; I use my vitamix to grind my wheat. It will grind everything even popcorn for cornmeal.
I do prefer the white wheat also for making bread. If you want to buy some excellent already ground wheat or white four try Cortez milling in Cortez, CO. They make bluebird flour which you see in a lot of grocery stores BUT they told me the bluebird really isn’t for bread. It was made for tortillas, Indian fry bread etc. The ones for bread are Red or white rose. Makes great bread.
And last, I sold some Sam Andy units for someone who was moving and didn’t want to take their food with them. It was 15 years old and it was the best whole wheat I have ever had. It was just before they started fooling with wheat to “improve it”. I have ground and whole wheat in #10 cans. Never turn your nose up at older wheat!

We splurged on the Country Living Grain Mill, a little pricey but very well made. Although we bought the AC electric motor kit with it, I also rigged a DC motor for it.

One thing to be careful of when hooking a motor to a mill is the RPMs. I would imagine most mills are the same, but it’s not recommended to turn the grinding faces at more than 90 rpm, otherwise they’ll heat up and lose grinding ability while also overheating your flour.

You can buy small DC motors with reduction gears, then size the pulley for the proper rpm.

An interesting side note, wheat found in King Tut’s tomb was still viable.

I believe the theory behind heat damage is that it affects the starches in the flour. They are the fuel that the leavening needs to produce all those lovely little bubbles of CO2. Their work has to be accomplished before you bake the loaf. That’s the theory anyway. I dunno. I avoided sleeping through an organic chemistry class by not taking it.

I have had my Grain Maker Mill for about a month. It will grind flour VERY fine. Has a life time warranty on the burrs. Will probably get a motor too! My 1st grinding experience was fun/ok. Stopped to take an Ibuprofen and put a little asper crème on my shoulders! LOL
Mr. was busy at that time, but he gets a turn next. Found out that oats seem to take longer to grind. Want the oats in bread for the cholesterol removal benefits. Grain Maker has a bicycle attachment too. Good upper body exercise!!!

We have Wonder mills, both the manual and the eclectic. Amazon has them. They are quality products at a reasonable price. We bought the manual mill first. It is harder than one thinks to grind flower by hand. You can rig up a motor to the hand mill but we later bought the electric mill, which is much easier and therefore more grain gets ground more often. We kept the hand mill in the event electricity becomes hard to get. We purchase organic grains from Azure Standard on line. They have all kinds of organic ancient and domestic grains available and they ship nationwide. It is a major life improvement to use quality grains. Not much is mentioned in prepper circles bout the evils of GMOs. I think one of the advantages of grinding our own grains is knowing that what we are eating is not poison.

We have a old magic mill (1970) stones /high speed got it from LDS folks ,, also a steel burr grinder for corn ,, looking for grain ask at a small local feed store ,,around here clean wheat go’s for as little as $5 a hundred at the farm so ask around ,,any one bakeing with buckwheat?or rye?

Oldhomesteader
Here I thought we were the only ones to have a Magic Mill. Purchased ours used before dh lost the ability to swallow food, but I still use it to produce flour all the cookies we bake each year for the doctors offices. Personally it makes a difference in the taste of the cookies, as we are asked every year…are you making us cookies this year? The answer is ‘yes’ as long as something does not interfere with process.

Is yours loud?? I have to grind the wheat berries outside due to the noise and light flour flying all over the house. It does give the neighbors a “what in the world is that noise”? The sound bounces off the canyon walls around here. lol

Antique collector hi’ yep like to raise the dead but still going strong after 46years just don’t try doing peanuts ,makes a real mess

Another place to find grain is ask at a farmer’s co op who is growing what and drive out and ask the farmer ,I for one have never said no to some one that asks and is willing to help out at harvest even if only helping by holding bags at the bagger or just running to get something,most farmer’s like it when people show an interest in what we do ,same thing on a ranch at branding and load out ,,yep we have to keep a eye on you to keep you from gitting hurt at first ,but once you catch on you most likely will get a call ,do you want to help???? And don’t be put off by some that’s gruff at first, stay nice and try again later

Oldhomesteader
We get up that way, what kind of cookies do you & Mrs. O like the best. Remember you can not just have one variety of cookies with tea/coffee/or hot chocolate. You & the Mrs’s give us an idea of what you like the best.

0ldhomesteader12/31/2016

I would be good with KEN forwarding my email address to you ,, cookies and tea would be nice

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Antique Collector12/30/2016

Oldhomesteader
You learned with peanuts…me it was coconut out of the bulk bins. Whew…what a mess to clean out of the machine, it took forever. I had to run wheat berries through a few times, each time tearing it down to clean it again. Then start the process all over again.
Better to purchase coconut flour if I need it. 🙂

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